Local breweries to serve up frothy feast

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

PLAINFIELD — Plainfield’s Limestone Brewing Company and Two Brothers Brewing Company of Warrenville will dish up a six-course froth and feast extravaganza in what is being billed as the southwest suburbs’ first collaborative beer dinner.

The Brotherhood of Route 59 Brewers Dinner, to be held at Limestone Brewing Company on April 3, will pair beers from the two brew pubs with delicacies such as roast pork dripping in barbeque sauce made from Limestone’s house-crafted root beer.

“It really is all about kinship, of the brotherhood that binds beer brewers,” said Leo Conaghan, national sales manager for Two Brothers. “It’s a celebration of the growing passion and interest in the local craft beer movement.”

The two Route 59 brewers — Two Brothers is to the north at 30W315 Calumet Ave. and Limestone opened its doors at 12337 S. Route 59 in December 2009 — are pairing up to showcase gourmet fare prepared by Limestone’s new chef, Darren Smith, with ale, Hefeweizen and stout meticulously matched to enhance the flavors in each dish.

“Two Brothers really is like our big brother,” said Alex Smith, general manager of Limestone Brewing Company. “We’re kind of the new kids on the block.”

Over the two-and-half hour taste fest, dinner guests will partake of six courses, starting with Electric Park Ale cheese dip and winding up with the chef’s favorite: chocolate Ukrainium Krusher banana-stuffed beignet and Limestone Brewing Company’s Ukrainium Krusher imperial stout.

“The very dark chocolatey flavor of the stout plays so beautifully with the banana of the beignet,” Smith said.

Smith is used to pairing dishes with wines. But working with beer was new for this veteran chef, who has worked in the kitchen at The Keywester and Luigi’s House in Naperville and Branmor’s American Grill in Bolingbrook.

He added an array of gourmet items to the menu, including steak Diane, vegetarian penne a la vodka and tenderloin carbonara with brandy cream sauce.

“I love cooking with liquor,” Smith said.

Each course is scrumptiously paired with a beer from Limestone and another from Two Brothers. Starting off with a “welcome brew” of Two Brothers Long Haul Session Ale and sipping about 5 ounces of beer at each course, dinner guests will imbibe 30 to 40 ounces of brew throughout the evening.

New brews

Limestone Brewing Company bills itself as a “community-conscious, family-friendly restaurant.” It hosts live entertainment with no cover charge weekly and offers lunch, dinner and appetizers.

The company recently released two new beers with local back stories.

Brew master Ken McMullen jokes that he feels like a monkey behind his brewery glass — visitors to the restaurant watch him work — so he gave the name to a new beer crafted in the tradition of Abbey monks. The Brew Monkey gets a rich creamy flavor from barley, wheat and oats paired with Belgian clear candi sugar and Abbey ale yeast. With more than 9 percent alcohol by volume, it packs a wallop.

The Flying Pig Imperial India Pale Ale is named after a Plainfield farmer’s pig, which was blown out of its pen during a storm in the 1920s and later found sleeping on the kitchen table. Like that powerful storm, this pale ale has 8.67 percent alcohol by volume. McMullen describes the brew as “hoppy and warming with a malty sweetness.”